After You

by Sam Mariano

  “Fuck me.”

  “Yeah?” he murmurs, nibbling my ear in the way he knows drives me out of my mind. “You want me, Nikki?”

  “You know I do,” I say, reaching up and dragging my nails down his back to punish him for making me say it.

  Every muscle in his body tightens, then he growls in my ear. “You know how much I fucking like that, Harmon.”

  I’m already on fire. I don’t want to drag this out, I just want him pumping inside my body and filling up every empty space with pleasure. “Then do something about it, Noble.”

  He doesn’t prep my body, but I don’t complain. Derek spreads my thighs, plants himself between them, and slowly pushes his cock inside me. My body stretches to accommodate his size. It’s the most delicious feeling, how easily he can push past my body’s natural resistance. I wish he could do that with my heart, too. I wish I could trust him not to wreck me if he did.

  Right now I want him to wreck me, but only physically. I don’t want gentle. I don’t want lovemaking. I want to ache tomorrow when he’s gone, and know it’s because of him.

  “Kiss me,” I demand.

  He narrows his blue eyes at me in disapproval, grabbing a fistful of hair and yanking. “Try again.”

  “Please.”

  “Better,” he says, leaning in and brushing his lips against mine.

  Smiling faintly against his lips, I say, “You’ll take it, huh?”

  “In a pinch,” he verifies.

  “You’re such a jerk,” I inform him.

  “You like it,” he replies, winking before pulling his hips back and plunging his full length inside me. I want to deny it just to be difficult, but I would be too obviously lying as I hold my breath and pull my body closer to his. As I meet his thrusts like I need them to breathe, as I beg him to take me harder and faster. He’s already driving into me so hard he should be breaking my body apart, but I beg for more brutality, like I need him to fuck my soul.

  We’re fucking so hard, we can’t stay in one place. Derek keeps repositioning me, and I just do my best to keep pace. Now he pulls out, flipping me sideways and pushing my knees forward. It feels like an odd position until he slides back into me and pleasure twists through me. I grab his muscular arm, holding on, feeling the way his muscles contract as he uses his body to give me pleasure. I forgot this feeling. I forgot the depths of the pain, but I forgot the depths of the pleasure, too. I forgot the unmatched intimacy of Derek moving inside my body, of being connected to him in the most primal way possible.

  I don’t like this position as much because I’m barely touching him, but as he picks the pace back up and pounds inside me, tension coils tighter and tighter with every impact. He feels different inside me in this position, the way his cock rubs my walls. There’s more urgency as I grasp at his arm, at the bedding.

  “Oh, God, yes. Derek. Harder, please,” I beg, grabbing the pillow behind my head.

  He thrusts so hard it almost hurts, but it pushes me over the edge, throwing me into a frenzied fit of pleasure. I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t feel anything but bliss as he continues to slide inside me, chasing his pleasure while my body convulses around him.

  “Mm, fuck, Nikki.”

  I’m weak from that release, but the pleasure on his face makes me hungry for his.

  “Stop,” I say.

  His eyes pop open and he looks mildly horrified. “What?”

  I laugh a little breathlessly, rolling onto my back and spreading my legs. I want to watch him while he finishes. “Proceed,” I tell him.

  “Jesus Christ, you just scared the shit out of me.”

  “I’m not that mean,” I tell him.

  Grabbing my hand, he brings my palm to his lips and kisses it. “You’re not mean at all.”

  Once his cock is seated inside me again, he leans down, palming one of my breasts and brushing his lips across mine. For a split second, the six years we’ve lost no longer exist. Feelings well up, nearly falling off my tongue before I realize it.

  I almost tell him I love him.

  It’s an old impulse, but it scares the shit out of me. I’m glad I already came, because that would’ve killed the building tension like a bucket of ice water dumped over my lady bits. Unaware of my turmoil, Derek’s powerful body moves over mine as he chases his own release. I love being the one to give it to him. Wrapping my arms around him, I close my eyes and wait for him to groan, for his body to go taut, for the feeling of him emptying himself inside me.

  Derek collapses against me when he finishes, his heart pounding wildly against my chest. It’s such a nice feeling, it melts away the panic I felt a moment ago. I don’t have long to enjoy this, so there’s little point in ruining it for myself. Derek pulls back and claims my mouth, at once lazy and passionate. I wrap my arm around his neck, letting him tangle me up in him. There will undoubtedly be chaos and hell to pay tomorrow, but for tonight, I just want to enjoy him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Morning light spills in through my window. I see it when I open my eyes, but I’m still sleepy so they drift closed again. It takes me a minute to come out of my sleep fog—I’m a vivid dreamer, and the separation between fantasy and reality sometimes feels less pronounced for me than it seems to be for others.

  For instance, it takes me another moment to realize Derek really is lying in bed next to me, his strong arm wrapped around me. I feel so warm. I never sleep snuggled up to someone like this. I would have turned the air conditioning down a couple more degrees if I’d been planning to sleep on a space heater all night long.

  He is unashamedly naked. Even though it’s summer, I pulled a blanket over myself out of a sense of common decency, but Derek did not. He lays sprawled across my bed as naked as the day he was born, and it shouldn’t be so damn endearing, but I can’t help a soft smile from tugging at my mouth. I trace every inch of him with my eyes, committing it all to memory. When he’s no longer lying in this bed with me, when I’m alone again, I want to remember the way he looks right now. The peace on his handsome face, his devil-may-care sprawl.

  I wonder what it’s like to be him, to be so good at so much. I have my talents, certainly, but I have many limitations as well, and he doesn’t. Derek can befriend anyone. He still has friendships from childhood. I can’t keep a friend for more than a couple years, and that’s a lengthy attachment for me. I don’t care what people think about me, but it took a lot of time, hurt, and practice to get there. It comes to Derek so naturally. He can just as easily make you his friend or his enemy, and he legitimately doesn’t give a damn if someone doesn’t like him. He has an inherent confidence, an easy charisma I could never have, not with any amount of work.

  We’re so mismatched. We were mismatched in high school, and now there’s no institutional hierarchy pointing out how utterly unalike we are, but it’s still as clear to me now as it was back then—maybe clearer.

  Derek is the cool, devil-may-care collector of relationships, and I am the loner, outcast from a social order I have no place in. It has always been that way, and it always will.

  My gaze wanders to the tattoo. I saw it from a distance at his house last weekend, but both times we’ve had sex, I haven’t had enough time before or after to check it out. During, he moves too much for me to read his skin. It’s two lines, four words.

  Two hearts.

  One soul.

  Huh. That’s simple, but the last thing I would expect Derek to ever get inked onto his body. I wonder what it means, but then unease crawls over me. I imagine him getting it for her. For Kayla. He couldn’t have loved her that much, right? It doesn’t seem like something he would pick out for himself though. Maybe she picked it out for him. I can see her nagging him forever until, exasperated, he agreed to it just to shut her up.

  If she put it there, I should be grateful. What better reminder could I ask for that he can never be mine? Instead of gratitude over another insurmountable obstacle between us, I want to scratch his skin until it’s gone.
>
  Maybe it’s not that. Maybe they’re lyrics to a song he likes or something. Still an odd thing to pick for his solitary tattoo, but I can’t stand thinking it has anything to do with Kayla. Even if it does, I hope he lies to me when I ask, because I don’t want to know that.

  Feeling icky, I move out of his embrace. Our differences in personality may not be enough to keep us apart somehow, but Kayla is. My grudge is. I would rather nurse it forever than let it go and deal with that evil whore’s presence in my life. He chose simplicity with Kayla over me, and I’ll choose my own peace of mind over him. We all have to live with our choices, and that is one I can definitely live with. My days of piecing out my self-respect just so I can hold onto him are long over.

  No longer in the mood to soak up his presence, I go to roll out of bed. He catches my arm, halting me, then snakes his other arm beneath my body and rolls me right back against him.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, a sleepy smile on his handsome face.

  My aching heart contracts. The damn thing is so weak, it’s already begging me to go back on my principles. It always has betrayed me for him. My fool heart is charmed just as easily as everyone else Derek comes across and decides to befriend. All it takes is his sleepy smile to make it forget how easily the tides can change, how quickly he can go from holding my heart in the palm of his hand to squeezing the life out of it.

  Thank goodness I listen to my head instead of my heart. I would be defeated if ever I let my heart take the reins—defeated, destroyed, pounded to dust. I have the dumbest heart anyone has ever had.

  “I’ve got work to do,” I tell him.

  “It’s Saturday,” he replies, as if this is unreasonable.

  Nodding patiently, I explain, “Yes. Some of us work on Saturdays.”

  “That’s lame. You’re the boss. Give yourself the day off.”

  “Can’t do that. Publishing waits for no man,” I inform him, attempting to roll away again.

  Keeping an unrelenting grip on me, he tugs me right back. “Okay, so when is your day off? Tomorrow?”

  “My day off was last Friday. You were there. Alex’s wedding.”

  Derek frowns. “I meant this week, obviously.”

  “I don’t take a day off every week. I don’t take days off at all unless there’s an event I can’t get out of. Obviously Alex’s wedding qualified, then the day you decided to kidnap me I ended up taking most of the day off, but that’s only because my phone was dead and I had no choice.”

  “So… when do you live your life?” he asks, appearing slightly confused.

  “Every day. This is my life.”

  “This is your work.”

  “Same thing,” I tell him.

  He frowns, mulling it over for a moment. “Okay, I can see how it’s a little different for you because your work is more a calling, mine is more to pay the bills, but there should still be down time, Nikki. You can’t work all the time. You’ll get burned out—and also miss out on your whole life. That’s probably worth mentioning.”

  Cocking an eyebrow, I look up and remind him, “You are only here because I wanted to use your sexy body. Your input regarding my life is not welcome or relevant.”

  “Well, I don’t keep to the box you try to store me in, you should have learned that by now. I’m formally requesting you put in for a day off and then get back to me with which day is good for you. I’ll work around your schedule, if need be.”

  I frown at him. “For what? We’re pretty much done here.”

  Derek is already shaking his head like that’s out of the question. “I want you to go out on a date with me,” he says.

  “Nope.”

  Rolling his eyes, he says, “Wow, you need to think about that a little longer?”

  “I don’t.” Placing a hand on his chest, I lean in and kiss him. “You can try to bust out of your box all you want, but it’s made of steel and wrapped up in chains with a sturdy padlock keeping you inside, understand? So unless you’re secretly Harry Houdini, I’m keeping you locked up in the booty call box. There’s no escape. It’s the only way.”

  “It is definitely not the only way. Even if I’m gonna be your booty call, you’re gonna have to take days off for it. I can come here sometimes, but not every time. You need to haul this pretty little ass back to my place sometimes. It’s also probably easier for you, since to come here I have to arrange a babysitter, and my place of work is a set place with set hours. Can’t you work from pretty much anywhere with wi-fi and a place to plug in your laptop?”

  Frowning, I push up on my elbow. “You have Cassidy again this weekend? If this is your weekend with her, you should be at home, Derek, not here harassing me.”

  “I have Cassidy every weekend.”

  “And you work during the week?”

  He nods.

  “Well, there you go. Our schedules are incompatible. I’m not going to monopolize all your Cassidy time, and you only have weekends off. The only time I could come over when Cassidy isn’t there would be week nights, and given it’s a three hour drive and you work regular hours, it just isn’t feasible. The earliest you could get here would be probably close to ten o’clock, and then it would be a three hour drive back to work the next day.”

  “Stop making excuses,” Derek says.

  “I’m not making excuses, I’m explaining why this can’t happen. That’s too much work for a booty call. This does not have long-term potential. Let’s not fuck it up trying to extend it. Let’s just allow it to be what it was, Derek. A reunion perfectly fitting the disaster that was our relationship, and now it’s time for us to both go back to our respective lives.”

  “Cassidy would be there on week nights,” he states, not even addressing the latter half of my remarks. “I have Cassidy full-time. There is no Cassidy-free time, so you’re not monopolizing anything. There’s no reason you can’t come around when she’s there. I thought I made that pretty clear last weekend.”

  “Wait, why do you have Cassidy full-time? When does Kayla see her?”

  Dragging a hand through his hair, he shakes his head. “She doesn’t. Kayla bailed four years ago, Nikki. I’m not even sure where she is. Los Angeles, last time I checked.”

  He says the words all at once, without any lengthy pauses in between, but time seems to slow down as the words travel from his lips to my ears, then slow down even more as my brain tries to process the information.

  Four years.

  He is saying Kayla left four whole years ago.

  As in, when I was hauling the first book in my trilogy to the post office to mail it to him, Kayla was either gone or about to leave. While I was forcing myself to let go of him, he was becoming a single father.

  I can’t find words. There are so many words I need to get out, questions—so many questions.

  Since I’m not speaking, he goes on. “She wasn’t cut out for motherhood. I know, you’re shocked. She gave it a whirl, I guess, but ultimately she was too selfish. Cassidy is better off without her, in my opinion. It’s hard for her sometimes though. I think it will be harder this year when she starts school and sees how many kids have mothers when she doesn’t.”

  Still attempting to process the ramifications, I ask, “She isn’t in Cassidy’s life at all? No visits, no phone calls, nothing? No contact whatsoever.”

  “None,” he verifies. “The first year she left, she sent her a box of Christmas presents. That’s the last time we heard from her. I thought maybe she died or something, but then I saw her partying out in L.A. on her Instagram, so… nope. Still out there, just retired from her role as Cassidy’s mother.”

  “But… how? Why?”

  Derek shrugs. “Guess trapping me was only fun when she was stealing me from someone else. Without the thrill of the win, all we had was each other, and I don’t know if you recall, but Kayla and I never actually liked one another. At all. Living together was pure hell. We were both miserable. Honestly, I was kind of relieved when she left. It wa
sn’t until Cassie started asking about her that I realized it wasn’t all about my feelings, and that even if she’s terrible, Cassie didn’t know that. To Cassie, she had a mother one day, and the next day she didn’t. I didn’t know how to explain it. It wasn’t like something happened to her to take her away, she just chose to leave. Choosing to leave me was one thing, that was fine—the right choice, even, because we were terrible together, but leaving Cassie, too? How is a little kid supposed to understand that?”

  “Oh, my God.” I hate Kayla and I’ve wished her gone a million times, but hearing that makes me feel awful. “Does she still ask about her?”

  “Not really. I don’t think she remembers much about her. Cassie was only two when she left, so she was only around for the baby days. She can’t remember much of those. Once in a while she’ll recall something that Kayla was there for, but for the most part, we don’t think about her. We carved out a pretty good life, just the two of us. We’ve got our own routine, a lot better than life was for either of us than when Kayla was around.” Reaching over and twining his fingers together with mine, he says, “Plus, I’m smart enough to know this wouldn’t be happening if Kayla had stuck around.”

  “Nothing is happening,” I mutter, but it’s an old impulse, too. Right now my brain is full of facts, fantasies, and missed opportunities. Six years ago, this would have been my dream come true. If I had stuck around, I would have only had to endure Kayla’s presence for two years, then Derek and his baby would have been abandoned. I could have swept right in and picked up the pieces. I would have. I know who I was back then, I know what I wanted, and if I had been there to see it actually happen…

  Derek and I would be together. We would have snapped right back together four years ago, and with Kayla out of the picture, it might have worked. Cassidy would have a maternal figure in her life—it would be me.

  “When I sent you the book…?”

  “She left about a month before that.” Laughing shortly, he says, “It was actually quite a gut punch, getting that in the mail. I know that’s what you wanted, but it hit even harder than you intended, given all that was going on in my life at the time.”